Gurgaon witnessed a heavy rainfall on Thursday evening leaving roads heavily waterlogged and commuters facing some tough times to reach their destinations. Unfortunately, the rain water only created problem for the residents and the commuters and later on got wasted in the absence of rain water harvesting mechanism in the city.

In particular we took the case of Palam Vihar,
comparatively a plush area in th Gurgaon to check what is the
situation rain water harvesting mechanism here. And the result of our
reality check happens to be very disappointing. It is not that the
Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) of the Palam Vihar hadn't raised
demands for the availability of rain water harvesting units but all
in vain.

In
Focus

Haryana government has made rain water harvesting
system mandatory in Gurgaon. But the irony is that this system is not
yet properly implemented in the entire district. And at the places it
is available, the system does not work properly as it is expected to
work in the rainy season. The residents have expressed their concerns
regarding the poor rain water harvesting system.

A former RWA president of Sector-1 in Palam Vihar
Prem Sadhlok said, "There are 18 rain water harvesting units in
our society. However, hardly six out of them are working. He further
added that our societies come under Ansal Developers but they do not
look after. That's why water logging creates a lots of problems for
the people of society. They raised this issue in Chandigarh but still
it is on hold. The government has not taken any action to sort out
this problem."

Lalit M Chandra, the president of NRI Group Housing
told some similar story about his society. He said there are two
harvesting units in 10.5 acres areas. They get these units cleaned
themselves as the government does not come forward to assist them.

Satish Kumar Sodhani, a RWA member of Sec-1 said,
"There is little facility of rain water harvesting units in our
society. This is the undertaking of colonizer. But he does not heed
to these problems. During rain fall, the open space in the plots
absorbs the water."

With a great disappointment on his face due to the
lack of proper mechanism to save the rain water for future, Ashok
Rana, RWA president Sector 23, said that there is not even a single
harvesting unit in his society.

"For the last two years, marks for units have been
made at thirty places in the society but till now it's not
implemented. We have raised this issue before the government many
times in the past but no action has been taken so far. It is confined
to papers only."

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